THE GREAT BOOKS LIST
A Progressive Exploration of the Great Books
| The List Era of Reformation and Rennaisance “I realized early on that the academy and the literary world alike, and I don't think there really is a distinction between the two, are always dominated by fools, knaves, charlatans and bureaucrats. And that being the case, any human being, male or female, of whatever status, who has a voice of her or his own, is not going to be liked.” Harold Bloom |
Book of the Week: February 2007 |
Alexis de Tocqueville: A life. By Hugh Brogan He was tiny, five foot four according to some though others allowed him an inch or so more, very slightly built with sloping shoulders. But his lovely brown eyes and wavy black hair and his wicked mouth were capable of enchanting, as was his melodious voice which was startling, coming from such a little man. We think of Alexis de Tocqueville as a chilly aristocrat looking on the follies and brutalities of his times with an austere and unsparing eye. An aristocrat he was, the son of a landowner in the Cotentin – the Château Tocqueville is just over the hill as you come in to land at Cherbourg – but he was warm, hot-tempered and sentimental. He burst into tears when he visited his childhood home after five months’ absence. He was amorous, too, nearly fought a duel, wrote love letters in invisible ink made out of lemon juice, married for love Marie Mottley, an English girl with no money, and never stopped loving her despite his numerous strayings.Read the Full Article
Edith Wharton By Hermione Lee It is a strange fate for a celebrated writer to be remembered as the friend of a still more famous one. Such, for a generation after her death in 1937, was Edith Wharton's lot. Her novels were out of fashion, indeed had been consigned to that limbo of all things 'Victorian' - 'prim', 'mannered', 'violets and old lace', etc - by a consciously modern public who simply supposed her books to be like that, from their setting in old New York, without actually reading them. Read the full article.
1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die edited by Peter Boxall Readers don't much care for being told what to do, as writers, publishers and, indeed, literary journalists often find to their cost. Try to force some rehashed old rubbish on them - on you - and the copies race back to the warehouse like papery lemmings careering towards a pulping machine; neglect to give enough attention to a book that really deserves better and the next thing you know, the author's photograph is grinning furiously at you wherever you look on the tube. Which is not to say that good books don't languish unread, while stinkers zoom up the bestseller charts. Read the full article .
The Aeneid. Virgil. Translated Robert Fagles. There’s a moment in Virgil’s “Aeneid” when the Trojan forces are massed like “a cloudburst wiping out the sun, sweeping over the seas toward land.” It’s an image that evokes another army, likewise intimidating, although this one’s composed chiefly of sedentary men, white-haired and bespectacled. Their numbers, too, are unreckonable — those squadrons of scholars who have, over the centuries, translated the “Aeneid.” Read the full article. |
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